Well, dear readers, it was one of THOSE nights, just one of those no sleep affairs that happen every now and then. I didn’t get to sleep until a little after three and I woke up three hours later and couldn’t fall back asleep. I just stayed in bed like so much fish, and played on the iPad. At about eight I just got up and wrote the liner notes for the Welcome to My World CD. We made the decision to record on the Tuesday and Wednesday after we open – just the best thing all around, I think. So, my engineer will be calling studios to find us the best rates and place – I’m kind of keen to do it at Capitol Records because when we did Sandy’s album there we were rather surprised at how competitive their rates were compared to where we normally record. So, IF they even book out evenings in four-hour slots, we’ll find out what it would take to do it there. If it’s not doable, then we’ll be at Westlake Audio, but my engineer suggested we might want to do it at their other location on Beverly Blvd. just east of La Cienega. In the heyday of doing our albums, we did quite a few at that location. Of course, no Astroburger if we do it there, so there’s that to consider. Or we’ll just do Studio D at our usual Westlake and be happy there. After figuring all that out and writing, I went back to bed around eleven. I fell asleep pretty quickly but only slept an additional hour, waking up at noon. Still, I just stayed in bed and rested and actually got up for real around one-thirty.
Then I did a jog, then did some work on the computer and had a couple of telephonic conversations. I then got ready to mosey on over to The Federal to see a nightclub show. Hilariously, it had basically been sunny all day, but the minute I opened the back door to go to the garage, it began pouring rain, and I do mean pouring rain. I ran as fast as I could to the garage. The minute I got to the garage it stopped raining and never started again. Go know.
I got to The Federal around five-thirty, meeting up with Doug Haverty. Michael Sterling always makes sure I have my usual front table – we were seated with folks I didn’t know. But there were several folks I did know in attendance, including Shelly Markham, Stephanie Fredericks (one of our Inside Out ladies), Dana Meller (another Inside Out lady and the girlfriend of the evening’s performer), Tom Hatten and Pete Menefee, critic Don Grigware and a few others.
Doug partook of the buffet, which he said was good. I had a new burger they’re doing called an Animal Burger. It’s a cheeseburger on a milk bun (whatever that is), with lettuce, pickles, tomato, grilled onions and 1000-Island dressing. It’s not that it was the biggest hunk of meat in the world, but with all the other accouterments, it was literally to big to take a bite out of, so I had to just use a fork and knife. It was very good, but if I were to have it again I would have raw rather than grilled onions. Only after I’d eaten did the owner tell me he would have gotten me my artichoke – good to know for future shows. Then it was show time.
The performer was Mark Arthur Miller – I’ve heard him sing a couple of times at private soirees. This was a show he’s put together entitled Soul Searching, about his growing up on the south side of Chicago, and his father, who split from the family when he was two. If I remember correctly, the father did communicate every now and then. Marc grew up loving soul music, especially Motown. And imagine his surprise to find that one of his favorite songs, For Once in My Life, was written by – his father, who was one of only two white songwriters employed by Motown. His father’s name was Ron Miller and he wrote a bunch of Motown hits. So, the show was all that kind of music, with some nice storytelling. There’s a really nice act here, but it needs a director to help with the pacing of it and to shorten it by ten minutes or so (the show clocked in at almost ninety-five minutes), and figure out where the emotional center of the show is, because it’s an affecting story and always interesting. But we all enjoyed it very much. We hung out for a while after, then I stopped at Yum Yum Donuts and got a chocolate buttermilk bar, since my entire food intake for the day was the burger (and no fries). Then I came home and ate the chocolate buttermilk bar all up, whilst answering e-mails and having an interesting volley on the Photos of Los Angeles Facebook page.
Someone posted a really nice photo from the 1940s, in full color – just beautiful, of a drugstore on the northeast corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Cherokee. Here it is.
I asked if that was the Love’s on Hollywood Blvd. The guy said no, he didn’t ever remember a Love’s on Hollywood Blvd. and that the drugstore had become a House of Pies. I explained to him that I’d walked the boulevard from the Chinese to the Pantages – one side of the street going east, the other side coming back west – from 1961 to 1966 regularly, and usually in the summers at least once or twice a week and that I never remembered a House of Pies there. So, I did my research immediately and found the Love’s, which was, in fact, located a block west of Cherokee near Musso and Frank. That mystery solved and I posted that photo. Here it is.
So, then he posted a photo of the House of Pies and by gum and by golly and buy bonds, there it was and here it is.
So, I posited that it had to have gotten there after 1966 and I was right, because I then found one of those driving shots on the boulevard from around 1963 and on that corner was a market. So, all mysteries solved with the final piece of the puzzle being that the House of Pies shut down in 1980. That means that for almost fifteen years I had no idea that it was there. Go know.
Today, I shall be up by nine and the interim helper comes at nine-thirty to get some invoices and to show me how the organizing of the Indiegogo contributors is going. We’ll probably work on that for a couple of hours, then I have a noon o’clock lunch meeting near LACC. Then I’ll hopefully pick up packages, come home, I’ll proof the liner notes and make sure I’m happy with them, then get them to the designer. That way, the entire package, text-wise, will be done (as will the cover), so all he’ll have to do is drop in the color photos that we take around the third of September. Then that can get printed and sent to the pressing plant so that once they have the master it’s full speed ahead. Then I have a very short little meeting, basically just to say hi to a potential contributor to the Sami Indiegogo campaign. I’ll also put the Facebook event page up for the August Kritzerland so people can start reserving.
Tomorrow I have a dinner, and the rest of the week is meetings and meals and seeing a couple of show things.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, work with the helper, have a lunch meeting, hopefully pick up packages, jog, have a brief meeting in the evening and then relax. Today’s topic of discussion: If you could get in our handy-dandy dandy-handy haineshisway.com time machine and go back to any restaurant from the 1940s on, where would you go and why? And what would you eat? For me, I’d simply go back to around 1956, land at Pico and La Cienega, and just go to every one of my favorites. I’d begin at Kentucky Boys for a hamburger, then go to Big Town to have a slice of pizza. Then I’d do some food at Kowloon, have an enchilada at Casa Cienega, go to Leo’s Delicatessen for a pickle and soda pop, have a cheeseburger at Fosters Freeze, then go to Stat’s and have their cheeseburger, then go to the drugstore at Pico and Robertson where I’d have an Orange Julius and a hot dog with mustard and onions. Then I’d take a break and see a movie at the Stadium, then I’d do some more Chinese at Wan-Q. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, hoping I’ll be lucky enough to have that very time machine dream.